BERNSTEIN & GERSHWIN

Friday, March 8, 2024 at 11:15 am

Saturday, March 9, 2024 at 7:30 pm

Sunday, March 10, 2024 at 2:30 pm

ALLEN-BRADLEY HALL

Jader Bignamini, conductor

George Li, piano

PROGRAM

LEONARD BERNSTEIN

Three Dance Episodes from On the Town

I. The Great Lover

II. Lonely Town (Pas de deux)

III. Times Square: 1944

MAURICE RAVEL

Concerto in G major for Piano and Orchestra, M. 83

I. Allegramente

II. Adagio assai

III. Presto

George Li, piano

INTERMISSION

MAURICE RAVEL

Valses nobles et sentimentales, M. 61a

GEORGE GERSHWIN

An American in Paris

The 2023.24 Classics Series is presented by the UNITED PERFORMING ARTS FUND and ROCKWELL AUTOMATION.

The length of this concert is approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes.

Guest Artist Biographies

JADER BIGNAMINI

Jader Bignamini is music director of the Detroit Symphony, leading his third full season in 2023.24. Outside of Detroit, his 2023.24 season includes debuts with the London and Bergen philharmonics, as well as returns to the Vienna State Opera conducting Manon Lescaut and the Opera de Paris conducting Adriana Lecouvreur.

Recent highlights include concerts with The Cleveland Orchestra at the Blossom Festival, Houston and New Jersey symphonies, Residentie Orkest The Hague, and Bern Symphony Orchestra; plus operatic engagements with the Metropolitan Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Bavarian State Opera, Dutch National Opera, Oper Frankfurt, and Canadian Opera Company.

In summer 2021, Bignamini led triumphant performances of Turandot at the Arena di Verona with Anna Netrebko and Yusiv Eyvazov, as well as a staged production of Rossini’s Stabat Mater at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro. Other recent highlights include Cavalleria rusticana at Michigan Opera Theatre, La bohème at Santa Fe Opera, and La traviata in Tokyo directed by Sofia Coppola. On the concert stage, he has led the Dallas and Milwaukee symphonies, Minnesota Orchestra, Slovenian and Freiburg philharmonic orchestras, Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, and Mannheim National Theater Orchestra.

Bignamini has conducted Manon Lescaut at the Bolshoi; La traviata at Bayerische Staatsoper; Eugene Onegin at Stadttheater Klagenfurt; Turandot at the Teatro Filarmonica; Il trovatore at Rome’s Teatro dell’Opera; the opening concert of the Orchestra Filarmonica del Teatro Comunale di Bologna conducting Carmina Burana; La bohème at the Municipal de São Paulo and La Fenice; L’elisir d’amore in Ancona; Tosca at the Comunale di Bologna; La forza del destino at the Verdi Festival in Parma; La bohème, Cavalleria rusticana, and El amor brujo at Teatro Filarmonico di Verona; Aida at Rome’s Teatro dell’Opera; Madama Butterfly at La Fenice; engagements with Maggio Musicale in Florence, the Festival della Valle d’Itria in Martina Franca, and the MITO Festival conducting Berlioz’ Messe solennelle. He made his concert debut at La Scala in 2015. Bignamini began his conducting career as assistant and then resident conductor of the Orchestra Sinfonica la Verdi, having been appointed by Riccardo Chailly in 2010. He was born in Crema and studied at the Piacenza Music Conservatory.

GEORGE LI

Praised by the Washington Post for combining “staggering technical prowess, a sense of command and depth of expression,” pianist George Li possesses an effortless grace, poised authority, and brilliant virtuosity. Since winning the Silver Medal at the 2015 International Tchaikovsky Competition, Li has established a major international reputation and performs regularly with some of the world’s leading orchestras and conductors, such as Dudamel, Gaffigan, Gergiev, Gimeno, Honeck, Orozco-Estrada, Petrenko, Robertson, Slatkin, Temirkanov, Tilson Thomas, Long Yu, and Xian Zhang.

Li’s 2023.24 season begins with a recital at the Grand Teton Music Festival, followed by his debut with the Aula Simfonia in Jakarta, Indonesia. He embarks on an extensive tour in China, including performances in Kunming, Beijing, and Shanghai. In Europe, Li presents recital programs in Viersen, Baden, Elmau, and Stuttgart, and he debuts with the Prague Philharmonia in Prague and Ljubljana. U.S. performances include engagements with the Cincinnati and Milwaukee symphonies, Florida Orchestra, Oklahoma City Philharmonic, and Chicago Sinfonietta, as well as recitals across the country.

Recent concerto highlights include performances with the Los Angeles, New York, London, St. Petersburg, and Buffalo philharmonics; the San Francisco, Cleveland, Tokyo, Frankfurt Radio, Sydney, Montreal, and Baltimore symphonies, as well as the Philharmonia, DSO Berlin, Orchestre National de Lyon, and Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège. Appearances at major festivals have included the Verbier, Ravinia, Montreux, and Edinburgh International Festivals, as well as Festival de Pâques in Aix-en-Provence. An active chamber musician, Li has performed alongside Benjamin Beilman, Noah Bendix-Balgley, James Ehnes, Daniel Hope, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, and Kian Soltani.

Li is an exclusive Warner Classics recording artist, with his debut recital album released in October 2017. His second recording for the label features Liszt’s solo works and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, which was recorded live with Vasily Petrenko and the London Philharmonic. His third album with the label, which will include solo pieces by Schumann, Ravel, and Stravinsky, is scheduled to be released in the spring of 2024.

Li gave his first public performance at Boston’s Steinway Hall at the age of 10, and in 2011 performed for President Obama and Chancellor Angela Merkel at the White House. Among Li’s many prizes, he was the recipient of the 2016 Avery Fisher Career Grant, a recipient of the 2012 Gilmore Young Artist Award, and the First Prize Winner of the 2010 Young Concert Artists International Auditions. He is currently pursuing an Artist Diploma at the New England Conservatory, studying under Wha Kyung Byun.

Program notes by Elaine Schmidt

LEONARD BERNSTEIN

Born 25 August 1918; Lawrence, Massachusetts, United States

Died 14 October 1990; New York City, United States

Three Dance Episodes from On the Town

Composed: 1945

First performance: 3 February 1946; San Francisco, California, United States

Last MSO performance: 1 February 2014; Francesco Lecce-Chong, conductor

Instrumentation: flute (doubling on piccolo); oboe (doubling on English horn); 3 clarinets (1st doubling on E-flat clarinet, 3rd doubling on bass clarinet); alto saxophone; 2 horns; 3 trumpets; 2 trombones; bass trombone; percussion (drum set, triangle, wood block, xylophone); piano; strings

Approximate duration: 11 minutes

As you listen to the orchestra play the three dance episodes from the musical On the Town, if you find yourself thinking that it sounds a lot more like Aaron Copland’s music than Leonard Bernstein, you are correct. Bernstein was a young man when he wrote On the Town. He was just 26 when it opened on Broadway, featuring his music along with book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. His ballet Fancy Free, which was choreographed by Jerome Robbins and was the basis for On the Town, opened at the Metropolitan Opera that same year.

Turning the Fancy Free ballet into a musical was Jerome Robbins’s idea. Although Bernstein relied on plot elements from Fancy Free when he put together On the Town, with the blessing of Robbins, Bernstein stated quite adamantly that not a note of music from Fancy Free could be found in On the Town. In fact, Bernstein very deliberately adopted Copland’s compositional style when writing On the Town out of his admiration for the composer, who was 18 years his senior. He was so adept at writing in another composer’s style that many people have been confused by how much some of On the Town sounds like Copland’s music.

With the music for On the Town, Bernstein also created something of a love letter to New York City, the city he had chosen as his home. He used bits and pieces of many genres of music, including jazz, Latin music, and more, because all of it could be heard in the vibrant neighborhoods of New York in the 1940s.

The three On the Town dance episodes are drawn from Fancy Free, telling the story of three American sailors whose ship is in port in New York City, giving them all 24 hours of shore leave. They spend their precious hours of freedom looking for love in the Big Apple. On the Town was also filmed by MGM and was released in 1949. The film version of the story starred Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Vera-Ellen, among others.

MAURICE RAVEL

Born 7 March 1875; Ciboure, France

Died 28 December 1937; Paris, France

Concerto in G major for Piano and Orchestra, M. 83

Composed: 1929 – 1931

First performance: 14 January 1932; Paris, France

Last MSO performance: 19 June 2016; Jeffrey Kahane, conductor & piano

Instrumentation: flute; piccolo; oboe; English horn; clarinet; E-flat clarinet; 2 bassoons; 2 horns; trumpet; trombone; timpani; percussion (bass drum, cymbals, slapstick, snare drum, tam-tam, triangles, wood block); harp; strings

Approximate duration: 23 minutes

French composer, pianist, and conductor Maurice Ravel was a bit of an enigma. His music moved and charmed audiences in his time and continues to do so today. But Ravel’s personality was one of coolness and distance. He never married and apparently kept a personal distance from even the people closest to him. He was never a father, but loved children and wrote music that captured children’s imaginations and delighted them, for instance his Ma mère l’Oye (the “Mother Goose” suite) and his opera L’enfant et les sortilèges (The Child and the Magic Spells), which he wrote with beloved French author Colette. Many musicologists have attributed Ravel’s preference for personal distance to his Basque heritage. Defending himself from accusations that he was unfeeling and icy towards others, he often explained that he was Basque, and that “Basques feel deeply, but seldom express it, and then only to a very few.”

Ravel was a constant student of music of the past as well as of the music written in his own time. He was also completely fascinated by the American phenomenon of jazz. He wrote of his G major concerto for piano and orchestra, “[This concerto is] written very much in the same spirit as those of Mozart and Saint-Saëns. The music of a concerto should, in my opinion, be lighthearted and brilliant, and not aim at profundity or at dramatic effects.”

That lightheartedness can be heard quite clearly from the energetic, piano-piccolo passages that open the piece, as well as the Gershwin-esque moments woven throughout the first movement. The piece’s Adagio second movement is a favorite of pianists and audiences alike, but Ravel confessed that it was possibly the most difficult, vexing bit of music he had ever composed. He wrote, “That flowing phrase! How I worked over it bar by bar! It nearly killed me!”

Ravel’s “lighthearted and brilliant” watchwords come back in full force during the piece’s captivating final movement, along with some easily recognizable allusions to the first movement. It is somehow ironic that the same composer who wrote so much such stirring, captivating music couldn’t express his feelings to others. Even more ironic, tragically so, is the fact that he lost the ability to speak in his last years due to a head injury suffered in a car accident.

MAURICE RAVEL

Born 7 March 1875; Ciboure, France

Died 28 December 1937; Paris, France

Valses nobles et sentimentales, M. 61a

Composed: 1911 (orchestrated 1912)

First performance: 22 April 1912; Paris, France

Last MSO performance: 1 May 1994; Yoel Levi, conductor

Instrumentation: 2 flutes; 2 oboes; English horn; 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons; 4 horns; 2 trumpets; 2 trombones; bass trombone; tuba; timpani; percussion (bass drum, cymbals, glockenspiel, snare drum, tambourine, triangle); 2 harps; celeste; strings

Approximate duration: 18 minutes

Written in 1911 for piano, Maurice Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales (Noble and Sentimental Waltzes) were an homage to Franz Schubert and his 34 Valses sentimentales (1823) and 12 Valses nobles (likely 1827).

When Ravel penned his own set of Valses nobles et sentimentales, he wrote with great affection for the waltz itself, which had been a near obsession with the dancing public for most of the previous century and for Schubert, as well. He wrote of the waltzes, “The title, Valses nobles et sentimentales, sufficiently indicates that I was intent on writing a set of Schubertian waltzes.” But he did not merely imitate Schubert. Instead, he wrote with one foot in Schubert’s world and one foot in his own world. Hearing Ravel’s pieces today, 200 years after Schubert wrote his waltzes and more than 100 years after Ravel wrote his, one can certainly hear elements of the infectious lilting waltzes of the 19th century — although perhaps more of Johann Strauss’s sweeping pieces than Schubert’s more homespun works — along with Ravel’s trademark elegance and subtle, refined complexity. The harmonic stamp of the Modernist style and the engaging sonic colors of the Impressionist style (a label Ravel rejected) are also present.

The piano version of Valses nobles et sentimentales was premiered by the Société musicale indépendante in Paris. Pieces on the program were performed without any credit to the composers, leaving it up to the audience and critics to guess who had written each piece. Although some in the audience guessed that Ravel’s waltzes had been written by Erik Satie or even Zoltán Kodály, a slight majority of the attendees guessed they were Ravel’s work.

Ravel published a brilliantly orchestrated version of the Valses nobles et sentimentales in 1912, as well as a ballet version, entitled, Adélaïde, ou le langage des fleurs (Adelaide: The Language of the Flowers). The plot he outlined for the music bore a strong resemblance to the plot of Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata.

Ravel included a curious quote from French poet Henri de Régnier in the piano score of the waltzes: “…the delicious and forever-new pleasure of a useless occupation.”

GEORGE GERSHWIN

Born 26 September 1898; New York City, United States

Died 11 July 1937; Los Angeles, California, United States

An American in Paris

Composed: 1928

First performance: 13 December 1928; New York City, United States

First performance: 13 December 1928; New York City, United States

Last MSO performance: 26 September 2015; Edo de Waart, conductor

Instrumentation: 3 flutes (3rd doubles on piccolo); 2 oboes; English horn; 2 clarinets; bass clarinet; alto saxophone; tenor saxophone; baritone saxophone; 2 bassoons; 4 horns; 3 trumpets; 2 trombones; bass trombone; tuba; timpani; percussion (bass drum, cymbals, glockenspiel, snare drum, taxi horns, triangle, xylophone); celeste; strings

Approximate duration: 17 minutes

American composer, songwriter, and pianist George Gershwin fused the sounds of jazz and classical orchestral music into a rich, colorful sonic tapestry, the likes of which had not been heard before. Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and his Concerto in F for piano and orchestra (1925) introduced his jazz-classical fusion to the concert-going public. But it was his American in Paris, subtitled “tone poem” and commissioned by Walter Damrosch and the New York Philharmonic, that put his hybrid compositional style before a global audience.

Gershwin had traveled to Paris in the mid-1920s, hoping to study composition with the famous Parisian teacher Nadia Boulanger. Much to his disappointment, she refused to take him on as a student. Her reason was not a lack of musical ability or creativity on his part. It was actually her unwillingness to alter his signature jazz-infused style of writing. French composer Maurice Ravel had the same reaction when Gershwin approached him for lessons, saying, “Why would you want to become a second-rate Ravel when you could become a first-rate Gershwin?”

Gershwin’s time in Paris may not have brought him the tutelage he was seeking, but the sights and sounds of the city formed the inspiration for his next big orchestral work, An American in Paris. In fact, Gershwin scoured the shops of Paris for several taxicab horns to be used in the piece. Conductor Walter Damrosch led the New York Philharmonic at the piece’s premiere in Carnegie Hall on 13 December 1928. Gershwin said of the piece, “If it pleases symphony audiences as a light, jolly piece, a series of impressions musically expressed, it succeeds.”

It did please audiences, but Gershwin would never know how much it pleased the public, nor that it would take on a life outside of the concert hall. Gershwin died of a brain tumor in 1937 at age 38. In 1951, the piece was included as the score to a scene danced by Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron in the classic film An American in Paris.